CRUSADE DIARY 1: Introducing Galactic Civilizations III: CRUSADE

Explore. Expand. Exploit. Exterminate. This is where the term "4X" originates.

The granddaddy of our genre is, of course, Sid Meier's Civilization. Where Sid Meier's Civilization leverages our common history from the dawn of agriculture to the moment we leave the Earth, Galactic Civilizations begins at the moment we leave our home world.

In Galactic Civilizations, players create their own histories. Each game is a different possibility.

When we released Galactic Civilizations III, we began taking notes on what players wanted to see in future updates or expansions to it. Many of the features ended up in updates which culminated in the recently released 2.0. Other features would take a great deal of time and thought to do.

The biggest, most important features have come together in Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade.

An economy based on citizenship that allowed players to macro or micro manage their civilizations based on their preferences in a way that didn't penalize either play style that eliminates sliders and dials.

Espionage for spying and sabotaging your opponents.

Interactive Invasions that make invading a planet a game unto itself.

A better UX for managing large and small empires alike.

These aren't the only features in Crusade of course. Far from it. It doesn't even touch on the Crusade campaign, the new alien civilizations, the new graphics engine, the new resource system, the combat changes, the continued evolution of the AI (I am happy to say that the free update to GalCiv III in v2.0 now surpasses the AI in GalCiv II -- sorry it took so long, I'll be happy to discuss AI coding in another diary entry).

The Schedule

Each week between now and the release of Crusade, we will be posting Development Diary highlighting a major element of the expansion. Here is a sneak preview of the first three:

CRUSADE DIARY 2: The Civilization Builder

February 9, we will walk through how you can build your own civilization to play as or to play against including how to assign specific ships for different roles, share your creations, create diplomacy behavior and more.

CRUSADE DIARY 3: Galactic Citizens

February 16, Take a tour of the all new citizen based economy. Gone are sliders and dials and in their place are your people. Much strategy (and AI coding) goes around how to get the most out of your most valuable asset: Your people.

CRUSADE DIARY 4: Spies and Saboteurs

February 23, The galaxy is a dangerous place. One of the vocations your citizens can take is to be trained to be spies and sent on dangerous missions. We will walk you through how espionage works, its consequences and the importance of knowing who is doing what and when.

FAQ

Q: Will Crusade be a stand-alone expansion?

A: No. It will be released as an add-on to Galactic Civilizations III (DLC).

Q: When will it be released?

A: Our target date is Spring.

Q: How much will it cost?

A: $19.99

Q: Will there be a public beta?

A: No.

Q: How will I be able to get it when released?

A: It'll be on Steam, GOG, direct and elsewhere as a DLC to Galactic Civilizations III.

The expansion certainly seems amazing. However, I can't count how many times on this forum I've tried to ask if you'll be adding end game challenges. These features are great but many of us have felt since even before WOM that the game snowballs after you take out the first ai or two. Are there any end game crises or allying against the greatest threat mechanics? All the amazing features in the world fade if you're too powerful right after your first two or three victories. I'd just like to see them make alliances against whoever gets too powerful.

The expansion certainly seems amazing. However, I can't count how many times on this forum I've tried to ask if you'll be adding end game challenges. These features are great but many of us have felt since even before WOM that the game snowballs after you take out the first ai or two. Are there any end game crises or allying against the greatest threat mechanics? All the amazing features in the world fade if you're too powerful right after your first two or three victories. I'd just like to see them make alliances against whoever gets too powerful.

Wow, there is more to this expansion than I was expecting. New graphics engine?

I'm super keen to hear more about how you are continuing to evolve the AI.

One question I do have relates to those of use who play with a custom faction we've modded into the base game currently. I went to the lengths of designing my own shipset and fixing a modified xml file specifically -- can you comment currently on how easy it will be for these custom factions to be brought into Crusade?

Very excited to hear more and to play for myself. Keep up the great work Stardock!

EDIT* Just want to drop an extra comment of appreciation for the artists as well. Those new leader portraits are gorgeous and I'm really looking forward to seeing the new races and every other bit of new art.

The expansion certainly seems amazing. However, I can't count how many times on this forum I've tried to ask if you'll be adding end game challenges. These features are great but many of us have felt since even before WOM that the game snowballs after you take out the first ai or two. Are there any end game crises or allying against the greatest threat mechanics? All the amazing features in the world fade if you're too powerful right after your first two or three victories. I'd just like to see them make alliances against whoever gets too powerful.

I hope you could give your thoughts.

Have you played 2.0?

Thanks for the response Frogboy, I have. I believe there was another thread on snowballing someone else made here. But in a game of 8 AI and me, after I take down the first 2, I didn't see in those last 2 games much alliance making between them against me and I just picked off the isolated AI's until I was too powerful. Was that a fluke? That being said, the AI was definitely more engaging and thoughtful than it had ever been before and I did lose a few games before that due to them taking me out early.

Outstanding news! I am eager to hear more. In fact I think I will fire up a new game this weekend and run thru it. I was playing a civ 6 game and I simply cannot dislodge Gandhi from a mountain surrounded city with knights and legionnaires. Those damn elephants are too strong!

Outstanding news! I am eager to hear more. In fact I think I will fire up a new game this weekend and run thru it. I was playing a civ 6 game and I simply cannot dislodge Gandhi from a mountain surrounded city with knights and legionnaires. Those damn elephants are too strong!

Probably a ring of hills around the city in all non-mountainous spaces, with flat lands behind those so you can't range attack either?

Back on topic: Looks like a stupendous update. I really have to get in to GC3 one of these days. Recently, just a tiny bit of Civ6, mixed with a stupid amount of Rimworld. Damn game has taken over all my time for 4x-ing!

Excellent. The cold, dark, and depressing winter, is no doubt very natural and full of frozen insects. I do like them best when they are in that state. But now comes the spring, full of life. Alien or otherwise! Very invigorating!

@Frogboy, will the Alliances get fixed? Current system is really... insufficient, to say.

I agree. In fact, I'll copy and paste my post from the founders thread with a couple of ideas. I hope this is on the short term to-do list.

............................................

I was wondering if alliances will be improved in Crusade. As they're currently implemented, they're pretty terrible, and as a usually Terran player, they're very important. Alliances need a couple of key improvements:

1. If I'm in an alliance with several strong races, this should give much pause to any race that is thinking about declaring war on me. There should be a huge diplomatic 'plus' that says "you have strong allies!" and have the number of pluses be dependent on the number and strength of my allies.

2. ...and equally important, if someone declares war on me, my allies should have to join in the fight on my behalf, or break the alliance (with a huge diplomatic penalty with the other civs).

Alliances are currently not much more than just another diplomatic positive level above 'close', they don't really do anything. This makes diplomatic gameplay not much fun.

Outstanding Stardock! Finally invasions getting some love. I think I can envision how it might work. You assign soldiers to different planet sectors and they protect all the buildings in that sector. I wonder if there will be different units for the invasions represented graphically. For example, you might research space marine technology and your unit looks similar to a warhammer 40k jacked dude in power armor. Perhaps there will be technology for mechs? Androids? Xenomorphs? My first reaction when I saw that Stellaris had xenomorph you could possibly research was AWESOME. However, Stellaris doesn't really show the planet invasion graphically. I miss the simple system MOO2 had where you see a quick animation of soldiers firing at each other and if you had battleoids they would be represented graphically, tanks would also, etc.

Oh and the economy... yeah that is actually one of the weaknesses of the galciv series in my opinion. I know it probably feels like you are jumping back on the bandwagon with the economic changes, but I think I like the direction you are taking the economy. Now, one issue is can you switch specialties like make scientists into soldiers if you have to probably subject to inefficiency?

Any chance in the future of you releasing a tutorial, guide, or commentary on your experiences making the Ai for Gal Civ? As someone who wants to focus on Ai in far future projects I'd love to learn whatever you would be willing to share on developing Ai.

February 9, we will walk through how you can build your own civilization to play as or to play against including how to assign specific ships for different roles, share your creations, create diplomacy behavior and more.

That's great and all that, but does that mean we'll be getting default ship designs that are assigned for their roles in this manner? Or some way of creating blueprints for this purpose?

A long time ago someone suggested creating your own tech trees in the custom faction editor. I like that idea. I still like the idea of combined research. I mean multiple factions working together on the same tech. Maybe adding tech trees that can only be obtained this way. I would like to see all the points put together, and then average the number of ideology selections, so you are given your average choice instead of picking all three ideologies. Right now the only real ideology is pragmatic. Can we have better ideology names, like survival of the fittest, exploitive, religious, atheistic, kind, friendly, logical, environmental, and scientific.

So lets say I assign a citizen to increasing Production (can I do that?) can I then later assign him to espionage?

Is there dedicated buildings increase citizens? i.e. is it taking away from other buildings?

Does each planet have it's own citizens or are they empire based?

If empire based how detailed assignments can there be? Assign to increase production on a single planet (a higher percentage) than increasing for the entire empire, etc.

can citizens die? (espionage)

can you assign a citizen to a shipyard to increase ship production. i.e. if I assign a citizen to shipyard I production 1/10 more a ship each round so after 10 rounds I would produce 1 extra ship. or if I assign 10 citizens to a shipyard it would produce 1 extra ship a round (assuming I have production to do that). obviously precentage could change.

Diplomacy questions? (didn't see a dedicated thread started yet)

Alliances? as mentioned would be nice to provide more support?

Different types of alliances, trade alliance, military alliance, other?

It would be nice to be able to assign minor factions to a default alliance (group), so we can make pseudo sub-nations. This is because when picking races at start of game you can't group minor-alliances. i.e. would be cool to have a pirate alliance built of minor factions. On that note have a dedicated group # for pirates so possible to add a faction to the priates

Also when creating a faction give it a default group which if selected manually or randomly is set to that group (rather than no group). This should likely be a toggle feature (Keep default group) as some people may not want default grouping. Then factions like the Startrek and such can create federations, without having assign them each time.

Another nice feature this would provide, is say I say select random factions, 10 from group x, and 10 from group y, without having to manually pick them and/or assign them.

Also obviously the game is very far along so not much new will be added that wasn't originally planned. But here is hoping that the tech trees/techs will get a pass/added to. Playing with basically the same research grind for years is not as fun as getting new toys to play with in expansions.

Would love for them to be longer and have more cool uniqueish stuff, as much as galciv2 seemed grindy i liked how there was just more to tech up even if upgrades were minor.

And please even in Crusade or a DLC please give/sell us updated unique weapon/defense fx(esp at end game). End game techs should feel more epic that just basically different colors of starter tier fx and more dmg.

Also OT but maybe someone can give me an idea of where to/how to mod this. Is there a way to make it so when you put a ton of lets say beam weapons on a hull to make it so every single one does not visually fire in the viewer? At end game it is kinda meh when your huge ships just fire all their weapons at the same time and 30+ different beams come out of the ship each round just looks meh.

My current fix is to make own component and just scale up the dmg, capacity and cost so it does the damage, cap and cost of lets say 30 of the item but just is 1 comp and thus only shoots once every X seconds. But it would be really nice if weapons scaled with hull size / capacity. So our end game doesn't look tacky with all the kinetic and beam weapon spam.